> Patreon provides pages on their own website within their own brand identity for these creators, stores their digital media, promotes them through their search interface etc
Which is exactly the kind of useless functionality that they don't need. Most of the creators I've seen either migrate away from Patreon or diversify themselves end up using payment processing services like Stripe or Paypal.
> Which is exactly the kind of useless functionality that they don't need.
So says you, yet the vast majority of people I subscribe to on Patreon use it as a delivery platform for advance content to subscribers. One of the major ways it promotes higher donation amounts is by letting those people have gated access to content. How else would this be easily accomplished except for this "useless" functionality? A single password that is handed out? A large list of passwords that the artist needs to manage?
It quickly becomes obvious that this useless functionality has a very real use case, and I think it's in fact one of the drivers of high donation rates in some cases.
Interestingly, I've found this doesn't work equally well for all media. Digital artists, webcomic people, etc. can often use patreon as a way to give fans access to unsellable WIPs. Similarly, writers will use patreon as a way to display trunk stories (although in this case patreon is a draw through its network effects more than it is the genuine best place to do this).
Which is exactly the kind of useless functionality that they don't need. Most of the creators I've seen either migrate away from Patreon or diversify themselves end up using payment processing services like Stripe or Paypal.